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On AI regulation and messaging

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Re: On AI regulation and messaging

#201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Besides cancer isn't really "a disease" but rather "a family of diseases" that can vary a lot. Even breast cancer can be one of many different cancers. It's like saying "we'll cure infectious diseases"

"Cancer isn't a single disease" is often shouted from the Dunning-Kruger peak of cancer research. I think it was popularized by an explainer video on Youtube, and now it's being memed. The people who think this way want to legitimize funding a particular research niche that they benefit from. A more sophisticated view is that cancer (one idea) is an problem of rates (like most things in biology) and there is a tumor…

>> "Cancer isn't a single disease" is often shouted from the Dunning-Kruger peak of cancer research.

Literally first phrase on Cancer Wikipedia entry.... [1]

"Cancer is a group of diseases involving uncontrolled cell growth typically resulting in tumors with the potential to invade or spread to other parts of the body...."

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cancer

Re: On AI regulation and messaging

#202

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> The thing that will work is actually curing cancer. This is honestly hilarious. Dario must think people are stupid. First, cancer research charities are some of the most well funded on this planet. They all obtain donations on the basis of "together, we will cure cancer" messaging. They all fund the best science they can. Second, the human body is a complicated thing. You can feed your fancy LLM as many textbooks a…

> Dario must think people are stupid. All of those guys think people are stupid. That theme has been repeating over and over again.

To be fair, the vast majority of people are stupid, in one way or another.

Or do you believe that you are smart in every way there is to be smart?

Re: On AI regulation and messaging

#204
post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which percentage of people have GPUs capable of running Qwen3.8 27B? I am one of those, and for my job I am still resorting to hyperscalers because tasks are completed faster and more accurately that way. Even if we assume that models will no longer improve and we reach a point where everyone can run Fable in their laptop, surely running 1000x Fable agents would give you an advantage. I think access to compute will m…

That's actually an interesting question, and I don't think we have the data to answer it. But we do have the Steam data, and about 7% of Steam users have a GPU that can run it well at a 4-Bit quant (≥24 GB VRAM). About 30% can run a 3-bit quant - I'd say that's just barely usable (≥16 GB VRAM). I'm not sure whether that's low or high, or how it compares to a general audience.

The general audience either has a low-performance iGPU generic laptop or only a phone or a tablet.

Re: On AI regulation and messaging

#206
post #45
post #30

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Anyone saying 10x as a serious claim is clearly using a round number and vibes; however, even if it were so, AI getting popular 3 years ago does not mean what you say. The earliest used models in this category would easily 10x (what did I just say) the creation of one-off short scripts, but you're not writing a 30-year app out of just a bunch of short scripts. The METR time horizons graph suggests we can now get 10x…

LLM-assisted software engineering seems to be very efficient if you have a deterministic target. (bun rewrite from zig to Rust, 100% Node.js compatibility, pnpm compatibility -- https://github.com/oven-sh/bun/pull/38333 )

And how long will it take to rewrite the Rust rewrite to idiomatic safe Rust?

Re: On AI regulation and messaging

#207
post #166

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There is a huge difference between your product being used for basic military operations like taking notes or getting from A to B, and your products suggesting military operations that kill hundreds of schoolchildren, an obvious and horrific war crime.

It's a mistake. If it was done by an auto-correct mechanism, would we still say "maybe don't sell your word processor to the army if you can't vouch for its auto-correct system!!!"? Besides, "taking notes" can literally be listing targets, and "getting from A to B" can be the road to killing them.

If the US military purchased camera guided smart munitions with a miscalibrated camera, such that it ignored adult targets and instead specifically targeted children, would that also be a simple mistake per your argument?

Re: On AI regulation and messaging

#208

> I think it is fundamentally a crisis of trust. I think that ordinary people don’t trust companies, governments, or the tech industry and always suspect that we are cooking up some new way to screw them over. [...] > I don’t think that a glitzy marketing campaign with a positive spin (which some have advocated that Anthropic do) is the way to win back that trust — at this point, saying that AI will cure cancer is mo…

After listening to Dario's interview with Dwarkesh, I really started wondering if Dario's been drinking too much of Claude's kool-aid.

I know people in positions of power often see lots filtered information that skews their perceptions of reality, but it seems like the level of pure hype Dario's pushing exceeds even the typical sycophantic filter bubble. Cure cancer indeed.

Re: On AI regulation and messaging

#209
post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The thing that will work is actually curing cancer. This is honestly hilarious. Dario must think people are stupid. First, cancer research charities are some of the most well funded on this planet. They all obtain donations on the basis of "together, we will cure cancer" messaging. They all fund the best science they can. Second, the human body is a complicated thing. You can feed your fancy LLM as many textbooks a…

> First, cancer research charities are some of the most well funded on this planet Maybe I'm overly cynical, but I think charities exist to exist. They don't have a strong incentive to actually deliver on their mission. Everyone at the org may be fully bought it and obviously want to cure cancer, but as an organization it would fail to deliver on the promise. Like most organisms, their actual purpose is to continue t…

A lot of basic research (including medicinal) is funded by governments who are not in it to make a lot of money. Sure, medical companies who then develop drugs based on this decades of knowledge and research are profit-oriented, but that's only one part of the equation.

Re: On AI regulation and messaging

#210
post #67

> I think it is fundamentally a crisis of trust. I think that ordinary people don’t trust companies, governments, or the tech industry and always suspect that we are cooking up some new way to screw them over. [...] > I don’t think that a glitzy marketing campaign with a positive spin (which some have advocated that Anthropic do) is the way to win back that trust — at this point, saying that AI will cure cancer is mo…

I think it's more reasonable than it sounds on the surface. People's jobs, the bubble, etc are societal level problems and well beyond what Anthropic could even hope to influence on their own. Curing cancer sounds insane, but it's also a research problem, not a societal level coordination problem. And one AI has already proved to help with breakthroughs (alphafold). IMO it makes sense for them to shoot for something…

> Curing cancer sounds insane, but it's also a research problem, not a societal level coordination problem.

Curing cancer is a societal problem. We have lots of cures for common diseases but resource allocation means people don't actually receive the treatment they need. For example, prohibitively expensive gene therapies, or HIV treatments in developing countries. A disease may have a "cure" but if people who need it don't receive it then from their perspective it may as well not exist.

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